INSUFFICIENCY

WHEN I attain to utter forth in verse Some inward thought, my soul throbs

audibly

Along my pulses, yearning to be free And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse,

To the individual, true, and the universe,
In consummation of right harmony.
But, like a wind-exposed, distorted tree,
We are blown against for ever by the curse
Which breathes through nature. Oh, the
world is weak-

The effluence of each is false to all,
And what we best conceive, we fail to
speak.

Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,

And then resume thy broken strains, and

seek

Fit peroration without let or thrall.

TWO SKETCHES

HER azure eyes, dark lashes hold in fee; Her fair superfluous ringlets, without check,

Drop after one another down her neck, As many to each cheek as you might see Green leaves to a wild rose! this sign outwardly,

And a like woman-covering seems to deck

Her inner nature. For she will not fleck World's sunshine with a finger. Sympathy

Must call her in Love's name! and then, I know,

She rises up, and brightens as she should,

And lights her smile for comfort, and is

slow

In nothing of high-hearted fortitude.
To smell this flower, come near it! such

can grow

In that sole garden where Christ's brow dropped blood.

I.

H. B.

THE shadow of her face upon the wall

May take your memory to the perfect

Greek,

MOUNTAINEER AND POET

the cheek

Too full, sir, for your models, if withal That bloom it wears could leave you critical,

And that smile reaching toward the rosy streak;

For one who smiles so, has no need to speak

To lead your thoughts along, as steed to stall.

A smile that turns the sunny side o' the heart

On all the world, as if herself did win By what she lavished on an open mart! Let no man call the liberal sweetness, sin,

For friends may whisper, as they stand apart,

'Methinks there's still some warmer place within.'

Because thou wast aweary of this one ;

I think thine angel's patience first was done,

To whom was inscribed, in grateful affection, my poem of Cyprus Wine.' There comes a moment in life when even gratitude and affection turn to pain, as they do now with me. This excellent and learned man, enthusiastic for the good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple and upright of human beings, passed out of his long darkness through death in the summer of 1848, Dr. Adam Clarke's daughter and biographer, Mrs. Smith (happier, in this than the absent), fulfilling a doubly filial duty as she sate by the death-bed of her father's friend and hers.

THIS poem contains the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. From a window,' the critic may demur. She bows to the objection in the very title of her work. No continuous narrative nor exposition of political philosophy is attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as proving her warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country, and the sincerity with which they are related, as indicating her own good faith and freedom from partisanship.

Of the two parts of this poem, the first was written nearly three years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of

1851. The discrepancy between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who,

though she certainly escaped the epidemic falling sickness' of enthusiasm for Pio Nono, takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious popular defects. If the discrepancy should be painful to the reader, let him understand that to the writer it has been more so. But such discrepancies we are called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature, implying the interval between aspiration and performance, between faith and dis-illusion, between hope and fact.

O trusted broken prophecy,
O richest fortune sourly crost,

Born for the future, to the future lost!

Nay, not lost to the future in this case. The future of Italy shall not be disinherited. FLORENCE, 1851.